Hesitation, Thy Name is Hamlet!
by DreamsofaDreamer
Summary: Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark has a flaw in which we all can understand - hesitation. Except for the fact that he's a man created by the pen of one of the best tragic writers. So of course this flaw is fatal. An internal monologue on just how hesitant Hamlet can be. *Warning: Gory at times* Based on his "To be or not to be" soliloquy.


**A/N: Hello everyone! This is an assignment I had for school on Shakespeare's****_ Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. _****Instead of making a skit about it, I re-wrote Hamlet's "To be or Not to Be" soliloquy as an internal monologue and had my classmate act it out. Ahaha, he didn't read it before hand and so he was totally winging it. Very funny! You should have been there! Anyway, if you like Shakespeare, give it a whirl. If not, read on because it's in plain English and I hope it will give you a sense of how complex Shakespeare's characters are. I love ****_Hamlet_**** because of this very fact and can never finish analyzing any one of the characters. They're just that deep! **

**If you plagiarize this, I swear I will find you and report you. AHAHA. Us writers are making ourselves vulnerable by posting our stories up. It's a lot of hard work, self-comparison, uncertainty, indecision, and nothing but sleepless nights, coffee and tears. Lots of them. Sorry, I've just returned from my monthly helping-other-authors-get-story-thieves-reported spree and it makes me genuinely upset to see how many people steal other peoples' work! Not cool!**

**I'll shut up now.**

Enjoy!

**-DD**

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Hamlet peers over the bannister as he walks into the great hall. It is empty. The walls are ordained in gold vines that seem to crawl, like an infestation, up to the ceiling and down again. The red velvet curtains clashed violently with the stark white marble flooring. He swallowed the bile that threatened to spew out of his throat. How was it that the colour red was everywhere? Whenever the curtains were bunched up, or the red rose potpourri turned black and curled upon itself, he couldn't help but think that his father's blood did the same. Coagulated. In his veins like spoiled milk. Like milk and lemon juice. The proud acid changing the milk into its lumpy servant.

He resisted the urge to stab his dagger into the fresh painting of Claudius and his mother as he passed it. Perhaps a little tear right down the middle. It would strike over _his_ heart. The red paint that coloured his jacket beaded profusely…just a little tear –

He also resisted the urge to spit on the painting and smudge his mother's face beyond recognition. Well, that's what she was now, to him. Beyond recognition. With her ties completely severed from his real father, what hold did she have now? He almost laughed. A thirty year old man with a new father! A thirty year old man with his _uncle _for his father, no doubt. It was ironic, really. To be killed by the man who used the same womb. To be killed by the man who had the same _blood _running in his veins.

He stopped at that thought. He had the same blood as the man who killed his father.  
Now Hamlet hated himself even more.

He couldn't even look in the mirror anymore without seeing his father's piercing blue eyes staring back at him anymore. They were also the same eyes as Claudius'. How he wanted to gouge his eyes out! How he wanted nothing more than to leave this body that reminded him so much of what he had, what he was going to lose and what he was supposed to do!

He glared at his hands. Flipping them over for good measure. Yes, these were the hands that are to kill Claudius.  
In his sleep? Ay, like his father. By the ear? Ay, let the poison kill the man's brain first. Let the man hear his death, feel it as the fire-y liquid ignites at the slightest touch of life's water.

Let his death consume him just like his father.

Hamlet could feel the little pinpricks in the corner of his eyes. His tear ducts protested the sudden onslaught of moisture.

Unlike his tears, Hamlet wouldn't be opposed to his own slaughter. At least, at least he would find the end to his means. He wouldn't have the guilt of someone' else's death over him. If the authorities didn't eat him alive, then his mine surely would. He would be racked with guilt no doubt. He would see two ghosts, not one. One was more than enough.

To be able to be so close to death but unable to attain it would surely eat as his conscience. He would be plagued by the blood on his hands. Plagued by the guilt. But this man lacked innocence! This man killed his father!

No, there would be no tears for this man!

This was how it went. Hamlet dreamed of ways to tighten the noose around Claudius' neck and not even a minute later would he be contemplating how guilty he'll feel for doing so. Then, not even a quart of a minute later would he be scolding himself for ever feeling sorry for himself.

Hamlet thrust himself in his father's old throne. It was cast off to the side to make room for Claudius'. It was taller than he was, made completely out of gold, ivory and velvet. Velvet that was as deep as blood as it poured out of a dead man's mouth. Frothing.

As if Hamlet could fight off what was to come his way any longer. As if he could resist the urge to take his blade and thrust it into his chest! The sea he was now drowning in mocked his futile attempts at fighting back. He wouldn't be able to wade into shore nor float up over the water at this rate.

Even if it was in water, it was an end by all means. If he closed his eyes, Hamlet could taste the end. It was cold, no doubt. And dark as dark could be. Could something taste of death? Ay, it was all around him. These halls mimicked the emptiness and starkness of one's cavities as every organ and ounce of blood was drawn out.

Except for his father's. His lay so thick in his veins that he was swollen thrice his size. A puncture through his skin will only result in the black crumb-like goo to seep from his insides. He'd been tempted to do it but was put off by the scent.

He was sorely tempted by this eternal sleep. Perhaps Hamlet would be able to go in this way. This, he hoped more than anything. To be killed in his sleep. To be lost in an endless dream –

If he dreamed at all, anyway.

His nights were so plagued with terrors that sleep would evade him altogether. It had been three long months of brutal torture. Night after night, he would never be granted the relief that was sleep. Hamlet hoped that this was destiny's way of saying that he will be sleeping for all eternity soon. He sure felt like he could sleep for that long, anyhow.

There were a thousand other things that could have plagued him. Fever. Influenza. The whooping cough. A plot for revenge by Fortinbras sped up somehow. He could have been dead in the few short months of his existence since his father's death. What was the cause by this sudden leap of faith? Horrible thoughts only to be _rewarded _by night terrors? He'd much rather be reprimanded by Death's cold, bony hand and guided through his shroud to never be heard from or seen of again.

Hamlet lingered on that thought.

Was _this_ his reward for thinking such bad things? Was an immortal life upon this earth perhaps _worse_ than what hell would be?

Was this hell?

Surely it could be some version of it. It would be worse if hell were to amplify every short-coming this earth has. What with the heavy hand of service and hierarchy, heavy words laden with condescension…your worth not nearly as much as you imagined. What with the fragility of love and a woman's fickle heart…both young and old this _disease_ plagues them all! What with the disgrace of government and selfish conquests for power – _why should I suffer when I could silence all these damn voices in my head with a single stab to the mortal coil that is my heart? Surely, as it wraps itself around my body, its carful twine can undo itself._

Ah, but the blade. Hamlet casts it aside. He knows what will come next. He will feel fury at the thought of Claudius winning this battle. He will be so immersed in his plans for revenge that he will begin to examine its faults. Who was he to remove another's life on earth? But he was his father's son! And he needed to avenge his death! But then he will think it through – he could not, for the life of him, manage to stay on one train of thought. Anger to sadness, pensiveness to irrationality. Irrationality to hastiness. Hastiness to pensiveness. Pensiveness to anger and so the cycle begins again!

Oh unbearable flaw! How might he ever gain the course of action if action is hesitation in disguise? Hamlet let his head fall back on the crown of the chair. His father's decisive nature leapt from this chair and into his grave. He wished he might have even a morsel of what he had.

In swift and firm motion he would say, 'conquer the world!' and the world would be conquered. Hamlet would disregard all motivation at the slightest thought and the drive to move on would disappear as quickly as it came.

He glared at Claudius' throne from afar, at his mother's right beside his and at his own throne on Claudius' left. Hamlet got up in a sudden burst of spontaneity and wanted his velvet seat as far from the _King's _as the stage would allow.

He paused at the center of the hall, right under the brightly lit chandelier and sighed. His father's paintings that were leaned up against the wall – to make room for Claudius' pompous head – gazed at him deprecatingly. His icy blue eyes seemed to latch onto his soul and –

Hamlet fell to his knees.

The words of his father echoed inside his head and grew louder at every instance. Something foul filled the air around him – Hamlet knew it was the stench of his own worth. It smelled of nothing. He was worth nothing and would never amount to anything.

He couldn't follow one _simple _task nor even _plan_ to finish the task. He had apt time to follow through! He was letting his father down. His kingdom down. His people down.

Who was this for – was this for himself? For his selfish need to feel like he _finally_ could do something right? He wasn't even sure anymore. He couldn't remember why avenging his father's death mattered to him.

Where was the drive to produce the swift but grim outcome? Where was the blood on his hands? The dagger? The poison?

Gone. Long gone.

Replaced by hideous inaccuracies of thought.

Replaced by trains of thought that carried him away, away from the motivation he so desperately needed to accomplish what was asked of him by a dead man. His dead _father_ no less.

There was no end in sight it seemed. He would plot his revenge for decades only to have Claudius ripped away from him by death himself. What was he to do then? Kill the man while he rested in peace? Pour poison into his already stilled veins – and then what? Be haunted by his father's incessant ghost at midnight for the next twenty years of his godforsaken life?

Hamlet laughed aloud at his own inadequacies.

How unforgiving the gods were when they created his flaws! He was without what made him human! He was without the ability to decide! He was fruitfully endowed with the best of all human qualities – the gift of human conscience!

To _hell _with his conscience! He will reunite with that dreadful quality when he was dead!

Hamlet briefly wondered of what the fate of his mind would be. Would he be forever trapped in his own mind? Oh hell, let it not come to that. He'd rather be trapped in the fickle mind of a woman yearning for something to quench her insatiable wantonness.

Ophelia – oh how her mind is so sparsely populated. To have the mind that she has and the little conscience she has would be a gift to Hamlet.

With a start, he notices as she sits in the library connected to the great hall. She was hidden by a – he felt sick – curtain that was bunched up to the side. She sat on his father's foot stool and he smirked. She was atop a pedestal. The way the light through the window shone on her gold locks made her seem more like the _innocent_ nymph she was raised to be. Handled like a precious stone she flitted easily from one man to the next, he was sure, spreading seeds of lies of her love.

Hamlet picked himself off of the ground and settled into the role he assumed since he declared his madness. He didn't forget to unbutton his shirt and untie his shoes when he rose this morning. He fixed on his face a careful sneer and forgot all about his previous train of thought. He left his dagger behind on the ground, perhaps is jacket too, for now he wasn't Hamlet. He was a player preparing for another rampant tirade.

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**A/N: Hoped you like it. Please critique and review! :)**


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